A well-known illustrator, Ernest Griset was commissioned by Darwin's friend Sir John Lubbock to make a series of large watercolors depicting the life of primitive man.

They reflect the views expressed by Lubbock in his book Pre-historic Times (1865), which in turn were indebted to Darwin's evolutionary notions. Humans had gradually developed from an animal state, and people of the Stone Age, Lubbock believed, had known nothing but hardship, struggle, and danger.

Here they hunt a huge mammoth and scatter as the stricken animal approaches.